Having an accurate determination of the amount of fixture usage in a plumbing system may be useful for a variety of reasons. The level of usage may help to predict the amount of associated resources, such as water supply or paper products, used in conjunction with the fixtures. It may also be used to assess the amount of wear on components of a plumbing system and to determine when components need to be replaced. Such information may also be used to redesign or improve the plumbing system in order for the system to function more effectively. For these reasons and many others, it is useful to have a method for determining the amount of plumbing fixture usage.
One method for monitoring restroom plumbing fixture use may include a camera mounted in the restroom. However, this has obvious social drawbacks. A person could monitor facility use, but in additional to social drawbacks, the person could not monitor continuously for 24 hours per day. Sensors (magnetic relay or optical relay) could be mounted in some fashion at each fixture, but this would require extensive wiring that is difficult to perform and/or install in existing facilities.
Flow meters could be installed in the supply lines for each of the fixture groups (water closet, urinal, lavatory), but this may be a prohibitively expensive and difficult option. Access to the piping supply risers is typically very limited, the cost per fixture group would be significant, and such metering would require shutdown of the facility for installation and removal of the flow meters.